1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of information management and, more particularly, to a controlled methodology for providing information to the right receivers at the right time with continuing improvement.
2. Description of the Related Art
The information age is all about information exchanges, with an ultimate goal of providing information receivers with desired information upon demand in a reasonable fashion. Conflicting concerns, however, make this goal difficult to achieve. For example, information controllers often do not wish to give out information of value to information receivers, where valuable information can include private or confidential information about an individual as well as intellectual property owned or controlled by a business entity. Other conflicting concerns include concerns of information accessibility versus security, information breadth versus accuracy, and information completeness versus timely delivery of information.
Conventional data exchanges have focused upon granting individuals access to data contained within designated data repositories. Access is usually granted in a broad stroke, such as granting read, write, and update privileges to users against the entire or designated portions of each data repository. Further, a data storage methodology is generally selected that optimizes the data within the data repository for a single platform and storage methodology. Conventional exchanges focus upon synchronizing disparate data stores to share data contained within the stores. Simply put, conventional exchanges are data-centric exchanges that focus upon manipulating bits and bytes as opposed to information-centric concerns.
Consequently, information is currently being stored in a manner and fashion tailored for computers and not necessarily tailored for the needs of information receivers, and/or information controllers. These entities care more about having the right information available to the right receivers, and only the right receivers, at the right time, and only at the right time. Conventional data processing and manipulation systems are inadequately designed to accomplish these information processing goals.
For example, conventional data processing and manipulation systems attempt to provide a one-size fits all solution for information gathering and processing. This approach ignores the fact that results that would be optimal for one individual can be less than optimal for another. Thus, in determining which of multiple choices and techniques should be used to gather and present information, conventional data processing systems ignore user-specific needs and desires, which can result in information responses that do not suit the purpose for which a request was made.